οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½....

οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½......

οΏ½οΏ½ ..οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ ....

‘’οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ ,οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ ‘’οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½......

οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ ‘’οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½’’οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½......

οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ .οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ ....

οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½, οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ .οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ 33 οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ ....

οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ .οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½ οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½οΏ½......

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There has been a lot of mud-slinging over the referendum on the Alternative Vote. The “No” campaign have been particularly bad at avoiding sensible debate and resorting to fear-mongering and smears.

The polling shows they will likely win by a significant margin. They shouldn’t. And with apparently 20%+ of people still undecided, I’d like to share some thoughts that might tip the balance in some people’s heads: please share this with anybody who is still undecided.

Here are 10 very good reasons you should vote “Yes” in the AV referendum tomorrow:

1. First Past The Post (FPTP) doesn’t work in a system with more than two parties

You might only like one of the two leading parties, but you can’t deny that we live in a society where more than two parties matter. If you live in Scotland or Wales, multi-party politics is a reality even more so.

FPTP was designed when there were only two political groups in Parliament: the Tories and the Whigs. Since the birth of Labour, the reformation of the Liberals and the rise of nationalist parties and groups like the Green Party, we live in a nation where there are multiple political voices.

You might not agree with them, but you agree under a democracy that they have a right to be heard, right? So why would you persist with a system that denies them that voice?

Right now, an MP can have support of less than 20% of the people in their constituency, and be sent to Parliament on behalf of all 100%. AV eliminates that from being possible, and forces more engaged politics.

2. AV actually weakens extremist parties

There are three parties wholly against the Alternative Vote: the Conservatives, the BNP and the Communist party.

The Tories don’t like it for a variety of reasons along with some Labour MPs (see below), but the BNP and the Communist parties don’t like it because it reduces their chances of getting a seat. How? It comes down to second preference votes.

People who are inclined to vote for extremist views typically will place them first. People who put other parties first are unlikely to offer a second preference to an extremist party. That means on the whole, parties like the BNP are likely to be eliminated quite early on.

To win, a candidate must convince at least 50% of the people who vote to give them at least a second or third preference vote. The BNP and the Communists are unlikely to achieve that whilst their views and the electorate’s are so out of kilter.

Under FPTP it’s possible to win a seat with just 20% of eligible voters agreeing with you, or around 30% of voters who actually vote - a much more achievable target for extremist parties to get.

3. AV forces consensus and a new mode of political debate

You might have noticed politicians from opposite sides don’t seem to like each other very much. Most people can’t stand watching Prime Minister’s Questions for all its Punch & Judy mechanics. FPTP requires confrontation and feeds off fear-mongering.

AV forces politicians into a very different mode. They have to talk about what they’re for, rather than what they’re against (as tactical voting disappears, see below), and they need to seek out ways to find compromise and agreement rather than just shout the other side down.

You might have strong feelings against the coalition government, but you can’t deny that the disagreements seem to have been dealt with more philosophical debate than previous disputes between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. It’s not that either side has sold out completely, but rather it’s because that’s what coalitions need to work. AV turns that progressive debate into the daily routine of politics.

4. AV doesn’t cost a penny more. The only penalty is a slightly longer election night special on the BBC

There have been some preposterous claims made about the cost of AV. One leaflet suggested it would cost us £250m, and another campaign suggested that maybe the money would be better spent on hospitals.

We could argue that democracy shouldn’t have a price put on it - particularly one so low given the size of our GDP - however that’s not the point.

AV won’t cost us anything more. The referendum will cost virtually nothing as it coincides with many local elections anyway. There are no “counting machines” that need to be bought, and the cost of explaining AV to the electorate has basically already been met by the (privately-funded) “Yes” campaign and various other groups. If you don’t currently understand how AV works, you can learn it yourself in under two minutes by reading the article on Wikipedia about it.

5. FPTP supports incompetent and lazy MPs - it provides a “job for life”, undeservedly

There are a lot of very bad MPs in Parliament. You’ve probably never heard their names, but they’ve been there for a long time, and know that they have a job for life. They are in “safe seats” where it would take a political Tsunami of epic proportions to remove them.

If you analyse which Labour members support the FPTP system over AV, you will realise they are generally unpopular figures who have held safe seats whilst resorting to “we hate the other side” politics, which would likely flounder under AV: John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, et al.

The Tory back-benches are filled with a similar breed of politician. They resent the voter, on the whole.

These MPs do not represent their constituency in Parliament. They represent their party in the constituency. With perhaps no more than 35% of the vote (and often with low turnouts, just a 10-15% approval from their constituency as a whole), they know they can do pretty much what they want. For example, on average MPs in safe seats claim more in expenses than MPs in marginals, and cost the taxpayer more.

One beauty of AV is that it pretty much eliminates the concept of a safe seat. There will be some left where there is overwhelming support for a candidate, but MPs will be more inclined to fight for the continued support of their entire constituency, and therefore act more in accordance with their wishes.

6. Under AV you can - if you wish - select just one candidate (and it’s actually easier)

At the moment under FPTP you type an X in a box. Under AV, if you only want to support one candidate and have no second preference, simply write ‘I’ instead. It’s one less line. It could be argued that under AV you’ll halve your time spent actually physically voting.

OK, I’m clearly making a small joke here, but there is nothing complicated about AV if you don’t want to think about multiple candidates, just vote for the one individual you want to see elected.

But don’t you want the option of being able to specify a second candidate if your first preference doesn’t win, just in case? Isn’t the elimination of tactical voting worth it? That brings us onto…

7. Tactical voting pretty much disappears under AV

This morning I got a “the Tories can’t win here” leaflet from the Lib Dems through my door. We’ve all seen them. Basically, if you don’t want Labour to win in this ward, there is no point in voting Conservative because of how the vote is counted.

Under AV at general elections, this would make no sense. Tory voters, instead of being told their votes are futile, would be reached out to by both parties seeking to build bridges with that community who live locally.

You would no longer need to go to the polls and vote for a party you disagree with, just to keep another party out. Campaigners would instead want to listen to views across the political spectrum in the hope of getting a second preference vote from people within those groups.

It completely changes the way we think about politics and political campaigning. For the better, and permanently.

There is a more complicated explanation of how tactical voting pretty much becomes impossible under AV in a section of the Wikipedia article.

8. We all start to count again

You might have heard the phrase “Mondeo Man”, “Windsor Woman” or the like at previous elections. These are demographic groups targeted by campaigners whose vote determines the election.

You see, at the last election, it’s thought that only 1.6% of votes actually changed the outcome. Because of the way FPTP favours jobs for life, safe seats and promotes tactical voting and negative politics, experts realised that the “swing” that would win the election would come from less than 1 voter in 50.

They identified who these people were based on where they lived. They analysed their lifestyles based on demographic information and labelled them. Experts then ran focus groups composed of this tiny demographic, and party policy and manifesto promises were crafted around what was responded to by that group.

All of those billboards, manifestos, news reports and editorials. They weren’t meant for 98.4% of the electorate - they were crafted to shape the opinion of just 1.6% of the electorate.

Does that seem a reasonable way to run a democracy to you? Under AV, we all start to count again.

9. It’s not a rubbish version of PR, and we don’t want PR anyway!

Some people have argued we should hold out for Proportional Representation because that means the number of MPs representing each party is in exact proportion to the number of votes cast for that party nationally.

We don’t want that.

Note, I said the MPs would be representing each party. They would no longer represent a constituency, and would be positioned on a list based on their loyalty to the party elders and the small Westminster clique that runs politics today.

We want and need a system that means an MP is tied to a constituency. We want and need a system that makes the MP want to represent the constituency within Parliament, rather than the other way around.

PR doesn’t do that. FPTP doesn’t do that. AV does.

10. If we vote “No”, we keep the status quo for at least a generation. 

The reality is, if we collectively vote “No” to the Alternative Vote, that’s it, we don’t get any more reform for a while - probably at least a generation. The concession prize might be a reform of the House of Lords, in order to try and keep the coalition together (it’s a very weak second prize for the Lib Dems), but I suspect if we voted “Yes”, then Lords reform would be here within no more than one more Parliament anyway - it’d be popular with voters.

We all agree that the current system is broken, but if we vote “no” we’re saying “that’s OK”. We are committing our children and possibly several generations more to the broken politics we’re so disenchanted with ourselves.

So, there we have it. 10 reasons. If you need any more, feel free to email me and I’ll try and answer your questions and answer any lingering doubts before polls open tomorrow.

bookoasis:

The World In A Bookshop by infra-leve.

My living room is starting to look like this actually…

In a couple of weeks time, it will be the first anniversary of a 35-year old intellectual killing himself on the steps of a church on the Harvard campus.

I discovered Mitchell Heisman’s “Suicide Note” via a concise article on responses to the story.

I’ve been reading “Suicide Note” since I found the article, on and off. Mitchell might have benefitted from an editor, but there is no doubt the work is philosophically an opus par excellence.

Nihilism is not my thing - I do not agree with his core philosophy that life is entirely without meaning - but the way he gets there, and some of the ideas he presents are wonderful. There are things to take away from it all that will likely resonate with me for the rest of my life - as works by all good philosophers have.

To this day, Wikipedia have repressed information about him based on a subjective rules that don’t recognise that the guy’s work is actually worth reading. I expect in due course academics will start to cite him, and that situation will change.

Out there is a growing movement to recognise him. There have already been calls from some - perhaps over-excited - individuals for him to be award a Nobel Prize in literature posthumously. I wouldn’t go that far, but I would encourage those who can deal with it to consider his work. 

The moment Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s work first came into my life was back in 2002. That first brush, I hated it. 

In time, I came to see him for the genius and pioneer that he was, and the work that Apple did - and does - as amongst the most extraordinary in the World today.

First some context:

In 2002, I was at the European BSD conference and Jordan Hubbard, founder of FreeBSD and then newly-employed release engineer at Apple, had secured for the “terminal room” a sponsorship from Apple which meant the room was full of the 2002 iMacs. The 2002 iMac was a little “alien” in that each machine was a dome with a flexible protruding screen. Installed on them was OS X, an operating system I had beta tested before its first release on an ancient iBook, and I had very mixed feelings about.

It was pretty. But was it really a Unix? The other developers of BSD Unix in the room needed very little convincing. The command line was Unix, but the desktop and applications on there were beautiful. It was what they dreamed a Unix should be. Many of them left that conference committed to buying Apple equipment and moving to OS X within the year.

I resented this “attack” on the community, but could see where they were coming from. It was - and remains - a key part of Apple’s renaissance: build great tools for developers and alpha-geeks, and in turn the developers will build an ecosystem that users crave. Instill in the developers an aesthetic and teach them a way to do the things they struggle with (human interface guidelines, for example), and they will reward you with loyalty.

In short: empower your customers, and they’ll empower you.

No technology firm had done this as successfully before as Apple were doing between 2002 and 2004.

By 2004, I had just about had it with the drain away from the community Apple had “caused”. On one mailing list I wrote a very angry email in response to somebody else’s request for configuration advice on their latest Apple laptop:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2004-October/002684.html

“Yes, of course. My advice is that you sell your over-priced fashion-victim toy with it’s Fisher Price Unix installed, and use the money instead to buy yourself a top of the range Thinkpad. It will outperform it, run FreeBSD, not look out of fashion next season, has been built by a company that is truly committed to the open source movement and whose execs don’t patronise you by assuming you travel to work on a skateboard in cargo pants or worse, pander to your girlfriend’s idea of what a computer should be.”

Ashamed by my petulant anger, about six month later I decided to reconsider, step back and think about what they were doing in a wider scheme of the industry I was in. This was when I started to “get it”. It was when I could see what others lauded about Apple and its founders.

Within 14 months of writing that email I had acquired a 12” iBook. It was all I could afford at the time, and even then it was subsidised by the fact that I was working in a University faculty and so got a discount.

I immediately loved the fact I had a Unix machine with WiFi and Bluetooth that I didn’t need to spend a week configuring. I loved the software I could buy, and that all the open source tools I loved would work too. I loved the thought that had gone into developing that code underlying OS X. I loved the developer tools and Safari. I found myself thinking more and more about aesthetics and craftsmanship as part of what I do as a developer. Suddenly programming wasn’t just a dry science of mathematics and engineering: Steve’s ideas were getting to me through the product of his and Apple’s work.

Two things then happened like thunderbolts. 

First, I had found a copy of Steve’s commencement speech to Stanford in 2005.

Steve’s speech stuck with me. I had studied rhetoric, and was pleased by the simple construct he had used - a structure I would begin to notice he used in product announcements - but the content had hit me somewhere deep.

In it he talked about three things:

• Follow your intuition, because in hindsight the dots will join up. You can’t plan to be great, you just have to let the intuition guide you.
• Do what you love, and change things if you find yourself not enjoying life
• Death is inevitable. It’s coming. Deal with it as an agent of change, and don’t waste your life.

The second thing that happened around then, was that I discovered the Ruby programming language, a language that was designed to be beautiful and enjoyable for programmers to work with.

It astonished me.

I don’t think it would have done if by that point I had not started to “get” aestheticism in software, the Apple way. It’s no secret that the Ruby on Rails framework is developed almost entirely on Apple OS X machines. A Ruby conference is basically a hang-out of Apple fans. The two seem to go hand-in-hand together, just like how in 2002 it was Apple and the BSD guys.

Last night as I watched the speech again on YouTube (on my iPhone, natch), I realised I was connecting dots back, and in hindsight the impact this speech and this discovery had on me was immense.

Coupled with the discovery of Ruby, what happened next was perhaps inevitable, but still surprised me.

I went and started my own business.

I had always wanted to, but right there and then, something clicked, and I got rid of all the fear and doubt and realised that when I looked back on my life I wanted to be able to say that for a while at least I had been an “entrepreneur”.

I made the decision that I would not work on projects in that business I did not enjoy. I would only work on things that brought me joy: that is to say, I would only write code in Ruby. A brave choice in early 2006 when Rails had yet to reach v1.0 and Ruby was still considered a “toy” language by many.

I had no money, no client roster, and survived the first six months coding away on that tiny, slow little 12” iBook for friends who had piece work for me. I had never been happier.

I ate noodles and beans on toast, drank donated Guinness and chose to love my work. Working from home I would love waking late on a Monday morning, but I could never lie-in: I always wanted to just get started.

I spent the next few years helping other businesses, talking about development as a craft, not just a science.

I went into schools and told kids that learning how to write beautiful software was the most powerful skill you could cheaply acquire in this generation. Like me, they could come up with an idea and with a laptop and internet connection share it with the World in a weekend.

In the years since, I have helped dozens of start-ups, spoken to thousands of teenage children (and hopefully inspired a few to give programming with an artistic flair a go), and changed my life substantially.

I am not the same man I was in 2005. The depression and anxiety I had suffered prior to then have more or less gone. I have a brilliant relationship with an amazing girl who I consider to be my best friend, and I do work that makes me excited almost every day.

The decisions I made in those few months in 2005 and early 2006, looking back, are what made me who I am today.

I had to call time on my main business in 2010 partly because I was finding myself looking in the mirror and not looking forward to the day ahead any more - just like Steve had said, I decided I needed to change something. As sales had dried up I realised I was doing something I no longer enjoyed.

I then turned down one job offer for another on a quarter of the salary because it felt right, it felt like more interesting work and ultimately I knew it might lead to an exciting adventure I had dreamed about.

Today I work on an amazing product with brilliant people and finding myself learning new things every day.

Looking back I realise I have developed a new sense of intense curiosity. I will wander in my work, inquisitively poking whole areas I know little about. I read more, listen more and learn more. I teach where I can, I play, and I explore.

I realise that my time on this little rock is limited, and I try and make sure every day I do something that makes me smile.

In hindsight then, Steve’s words and work have had a substantial impact on who I am today professionally. Because that impact made my work more joyful, pleasant and fulfilling, in turn, his words and work have made my life better than it would have been without his impact.

“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”

It’s all the more impressive because according to “the rules” society is meant to work by, he should have been another liberal arts wash-up. As I said on Facebook earlier:

“I don’t think the economically right-wing anywhere - US, UK, Eurozone, China, anywhere - would be able to deal with the idea that the largest company on the planet was founded by a Buddhist counter-culturalist of complex family origins who made decisions based on intuition, aestheticism, love and curiosity.

Yet, it makes perfect sense to me.”

I never met him, never got close to knowing him the way that his friends and family did, or even his colleagues, but in my own way I learned to love him. His impact will be with me for the rest of my life, and late last night as the news broke here in the UK, despite it being on the cards for a while, the news came as a shock and I had to hold back the tears.

His critics’ words (and there are many!), sound very much like my own before I “got it”. Right now - today - though, it is petulant, angry, juvenile scribbling, and unworthy of any mature grown-up, given it is less than 24 hours since his dying.

Some call him a fascist, others a megalomaniac. In essence all he was trying to do was produce the best - and most human-friendly - technological products humanity was capable of producing right now. He did so within the rules shareholders gave him along with their money, because after being fired once, he didn’t want to mess up and be fired again. As ever, he exceeded their expectations and produced a company larger than any other on earth in terms of market capitalisation.

When you have a vision, as long as nobody gets hurt along the way, there’s no harm in following it ruthlessly. That’s what he did.

Some point to the fact that he didn’t donate much to charity in his life time, but I’m quietly confident that is because he didn’t want the ego stroking whilst he was still alive, and in coming years and months his wealth will quietly reach parts of the World that need it. He felt that shareholders’ money was their, and he shouldn’t give it away. He felt the best way he could help the World was by empowering as many people as possible. There’s no real shame in that. And in that, he was immensely successful.

He was also a subversive, and this is a point that his critics miss - or point to - the most. Biologically he was a half-Syrian Muslim, which when acknowledged in the last decade caused the conservative right in the US a huge problem: was the leader of the hottest thing on Wall Street one of them? They needn’t have worried - he’d discovered Buddhism many years ago. Adoptively he grew up to be a counter-culture Bay Area “hippie” and counter-culture type that worried some in the establishment even more.

His critics point to the consumerist message of Apple, without realising its founding principle was to go against the grain and to help people push further than the establishment wanted them to. The fact that he was able to make a living - a good living - as reward for that vision should not be seen as a fault or flaw.

Those unfamiliar with this background with questions to ask might want to start here. It might change your mind about him.

He wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. But regardless, he was an inspiration to millions who right now are working at building the next generation of technology. He showed us what we were capable of when we tried, and his death some 20-30 years “before his time” shows what a great leveller pancreatic cancer can be. So, if you are a critic: please shut the hell up and let us deal with paying tribute to him in our own way. You’ll reap the benefits as we march forward, inspired by his vision, into giving you the technology you deserve to make the World a better place.

I genuinely believe those who hate him haven’t given him - specifically what lay beneath his vision - a chance, in the same way I hadn’t.

The moment I did though and started to use the tools he and his company produced the way they were designed, my life got better and my attitude to what I wanted to do with my life improved.

I can’t think of another businessman I could say that about. I can’t think of another businessman anybody will be able to say that about when they die.

As I watched that commencement speech another time, the words were as fresh and as poignant as ever. His final few words seem particularly appropriate to me today, and so I will leave you with them. You may love him, you may hate him, but you can’t disagree that his vision was sharp, and worth sharing.

My thoughts and condolences today are of course with his family, his friends and colleagues, and all who were impacted by Steve from a distance the way I was. Steve was an amazing man, who inspired so many and has changed the World for the better, forever.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Presuming I do not choke on a pretzel, drown in a gin and tonic or get run over by a minicab driver hurtling around the streets of Manchester in order to maximise his double fare revenues, I should see out 2011 in the next few hours.

Thank the invisible big man in the sky who probably isn’t there for that.

This year, I was hospitalised, my girlfriend broke her arm and spent 2 weeks waiting for surgery in hospital, and I missed almost every single deadline and objective I set for myself.

To say it has been an emotional, miserable year would be an understatement. Given the year before it we lost my grandmother to cancer and my business went under, it would be hard to call it my “worst year ever” but it’s dialled quite high on that scale.

Some silver linings though: I now have a job at a startup I love working with people whose company I enjoy and my probable financial situation 5 years from now looks very good indeed. Having more time at home with the girlfriend has been great, and it seems I’ve given up smoking again (I’ll consider myself truly a non-smoker sometime in February if I get there without another cig).

I don’t do “resolutions” normally, but I do have a few objectives:

• I need to get my weight down. I’m finally prepared to do something about it.
• I want to create more, so will aim to not go more than two or three consecutive days without working on something creative in 2012. It could be writing (here, for example), it could be code for a personal project, or it could be something I’ve never really tried before (music? art? Don’t know yet). I basically want to spend less time reading/consuming and more time doing stuff. David Tate provides excellent inspiration if you want to consider doing the same. I’ll try to document as much of that as possible here.
• I’m going to try and shift from always being behind/late for almost everything going on in my life, to being early. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I suspect if I can pull it off, I’ll be calmer and happier as a result.

And that’s all I’m aiming for in 2012: get healthier, lose some weight, create more, stop being late. They’re objectives, not resolutions, so can’t be broken. If I slip up, I’ll just crack on.

I really hope it’s enough to make 2012 better than 2011 and 2010. I’m overdue for a good year.

… but it seems like what one reader described as “Britain’s patchiest blog”, which you are now reading, is about to be resurrected.

140 characters isn’t enough, and there is plenty I want to say that seems odd in the confines of a closed social network like Facebook or Google+

Interestingly today I was reminded how little importance the “What?” I write and “How?” I write is compared to the “Why?”